


I saw Trouble in their eyes

by Shelobs



Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game), Original Work
Genre: Blood and Injury, Choking, Gen, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2020-10-18
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:21:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27028000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shelobs/pseuds/Shelobs
Summary: Eilis Lochlain, ruthless Captain in the Barninheim Revolution, is rewarded for his skill with a warlock pact and a title. Two years after the war his patron sends him to retrieve someone holed up in a town on the southeast coast of the Ostrabrahm Empire.
Relationships: Original Character(s) & Original Character(s)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 5





	I saw Trouble in their eyes

This city stinks.   
  
Not in the way a petulant child would say it, the streets literally smell like the wastes of all manner of creatures. The buildings loom precariously over narrow, winding alleys and the shadows look up with hopeful eyes. Eilis keeps a hand on his crossbow and his coin, unfortunately leaving him without a spare hand to hold his perfumed handkerchief to his nose. And Blythe had been so thoughtful in giving it to him when he confided his plans in them. He will need to find a superb gift to bring them while he’s here. And something for the Duchess of course, he has no desire to land in her bad graces.

  
Eilis shakes his head to clear it. He will have time to shop later, first he needs to retrieve what he’s here for. His patron, usually more poetic in his communication, was explicit about this. His heir returned, safely, from wherever they had holed up or the life of Queen Ragna. In the most private moments of the night, with his blanket pulled over his head as though it will shield his thoughts, Eilis lets himself wonder if he’s made a poor choice in pledging himself to his patron. He lets himself fantasize, for just a moment, about walking away from the arrangement. Where would he go if he was no longer tied to the ironclad will of King Enceladus? The dream offers him a moment of peace before the reality that everything he is - Captain Eilis Lochlain of the Green Dragon, High Admiral of the Iron Concord, the scourge of the Ecrosian seas - was given to him by the King. Without his patronage what is he left? A selkie coat and memories of a war that haunt him night and day. No. He refuses to jeapordize this pact. This heir, whoever they are, is coming with him if he has to chain them to the deck, himself. He isn’t stupid enough to believe that the slaying of the Vaskelain queen will be dropped when he does succeed in this task, at best he’s hoping that whatever plans the King has for the heir will keep him busy long enough for the queen to at least reach adulthood. The thought of killing a child again turns his stomach. As it is, the fact that the first ones were an indirect killing is the only reason he can sleep at night.

Deep in thought, Eilis nearly misses the building. The faded sign over the door advertises:”The Palace of Heavenly Pleasures;” with a scoff at the irony he steps up to knock on the dilapidated front door. After an lengthy pause, a middle aged tiefling woman opens the door and glares down at him with a quirked eyebrow.

“What a polite young sir, knocking before you enter,” she praises, dripping with sarcasm, “how may we serve you _m’lord_ ”   
  
“Oh no ma’am, I apologize for the confusion but I am not in fact here to partake of your services... I don’t mean to imply that they would not be satisfactory services! I am simply here on business rather than - uh - pleasure.

Her only response is to fix him with an unreadable stare, so he presses on, “I’m looking for someone. Not, uh, the way that people are usually looking for someone here. I am in search of a specific someone.”

One of her eyebrows quirks but she offers no other response to his clumsy explanation. Eilis sighs. Reluctantly he adds, “I am here on the behest of King Enceladus of the Iron Concord and his High Admiral, Captain Lochlain of the Green Dragon.”

The blood drains from her face. She begins to back away from the doorway, raising her hands and assuring him she means no trouble. Eilis steps warily into the room after her. The woman is still backing away from him with her hands up as though appeasing a wild animal. A brief bout of laughter from upstairs startles her and she jumps, flattening herself against the peeling wallpaper. She shrinks back further as he approaches, as though trying to phase through the solid plaster of the wall to get away from him. Eilis raises his hands in a placating manner but the movement only startles her further and she yelps. At that he stops approaching and asks in what he hopes is a calming voice: "If there is someone here calling themselves Kingfisher, that is the individual for whom I am searching.”

She doesn’t answer him, just points a shaking finger toward the ceiling. He nods his thanks and begins up the stairs. The wood creaks a protest with every step and the banister feels concerningly tacky. Pulling out the handkerchief to wipe off his hand, he pauses at the landing and stares down the hallway. Closed doors line the walls; voices, and other more personal sounds, filter out from behind some of them. Starting with the closest one, Eilis tries the door immediately to his right and finds an empty room, the gauzy curtains hanging over the bed in the center sway slightly in the breeze from the doorway. The second room is not empty and Eilis feels himself flush when one of the occupants pauses in his efforts to give him a wink. He hurriedly backs out of the room and closes the door again. 

  
After two more empty rooms and one projectile hurled at his head from another interrupted couple, he reaches the last door in the hallway. The room is silent as he cracks the door and peers in.

A figure lounges on the floor, leaning against the hearth of the empty fireplace straight across from where Eilis stands at the door. They notice him and smile, or more accurately they bare their teeth in his direction. Caught in their gaze, Eilis steps fully into the room. He surveys the room, covered in miscellaneous articles of clothing that appear to belong to them although some of them are clearly the wrong size. He admires their hair, the shaved sides and elaborate red braid running down the center, woven with gold beads glinting in the afternoon sun. He notes the window over their shoulder, a luxury none of the other rooms that he's seen have had.

Throughout the process, he very pointedly does _not_ look at the defined muscles of their bare chest as they raise the bottle in their hand or the obscene movement of their lips as they take a swig of whatever is inside. Eilis clears his throat and asks: “Siarnaq? I presume?”

The haze in their eyes evaporates under the fury burning through them at the mention of the name. The brief flash of emotion that breaks their carefully casual composure is the only warning he receives before he is thrown back against the wall with their hands at his throat. Everything narrows to the points where their fingers lay against the exposed skin above his cravat, then they begin to press. They lift him bodily off the ground and the room starts to swim as his air is cut off. His hands scrabble against the wall and grasp for his pockets, flailing against the tidal pull of the darkness already creeping into the edges of his vision.

"I don't know who the _fuck_ you are," they growl, punctuating the sentence by pulling him back and slamming him against the wall a second time, and Eilis sees stars dancing in the blackness and feels his control of his limbs beginning to slip. "But if you ever-"

Their threat cuts off when Eilis slices a dagger across their chest. They stumble back a half step in surprise at the violence from this small, elegantly dressed man. When their grip on his throat loosens, he chokes out: "Captain Eilis Lochlain. Of the Green Dragon"

They release him fully and step back. He drops to the floor in a heap of velvet and chokes down a breath before looking up to find them staring down at him with disgust. "He sent you then, _Captain._ " They punctuate the resigned statement by spitting the honorific as though it left a bitter taste in their mouth. They retrieve the bottle from where it landed and take a longer swig from the remaining contents. "I'm not fuckin going fancypants. Knock me out and drag me if you want but, I really don't think you could carry me," they smirk.

Eilis pulls himself slowly to his feet, rubbing the ring of bruises already forming on his neck and returning the bloodied dagger to its sheath. He steps deliberately in their direction, his free hand beginning to crackle with lightning. Their eyes widen slightly at the magic but they are otherwise unresponsive as he steps closer until he's close enough for the lightning to raise the hairs on their neck. "Perhaps I was...unclear, about what is happening, King Fisher, but I was not askin’." He keeps unflinching eye contact while lowering the hand and releasing a bolt of lightning that wraps around their neck and drags them down to look him directly in the eye. A heavy silence fills the room as Eilis appraises them with more scrutiny, noting the slight tremor in their hands and the lack of obvious injury to their neck. Lightning this concentrated should have them writhing on the floor, instead a smile breaks out across their face, glowing in the halo of electricity encircling their neck, and they throw back their head and laugh. The sound echos across the empty room and shocks the rest of the building into silence. Eilis blinks in confusion as their laughter crests and subsides to a few chuckles. They reach up and snap the lightning off of them like so many twigs, and the rest of the spell fizzles in Eilis’s hand. He gapes as they straighten back to their towering height and slap him on the back like an old friend.

"I respect the effort. Next time you hit me though you’d better make it count. Let's go, Cap'an."

They stride to the door without another word, not stopping to collect any of the personal affects scattered throughout the room or to put on a shirt to coverctheir still-bleeding chest. Eilis stands in the vacated room and groans at their retreating form. This one might be more trouble than they're worth.


End file.
